Reviews of the latest films and music

Taylor Swift responds to haters with ‘Shake It Off’

Twitter blew up a storm yesterday when Taylor Swift revealed a new song Shake It Off, a single from her new album 1989 (which is due to be released on October 27th). Making the announcement at a Yahoo live stream event, the singer gave her fans the song through the music video that was released.

A catchy pop song that has the lines “haters gonna hate” and “fakers gonna fake”, Taylor hits back to “what people say” using her best strength: her music. Swift shares that she just “shake(s) it off”, a motto that her fans are sure to follow (it would be interesting to see if it has the same effect as Drake’s YOLO motto…).

The song doesn’t really have Taylor’s usual stamp on it – the lack of country and the heartbroken lyrics that are missing (which tend to be a part of the Swift-song-formula) mean that Taylor delivers a fun song much like her single 22. The verses and the chorus are simple, which means that we can learn the song faster and sing it incessantly! The only thing that I didn’t enjoy was the bridge:My ex-man bought his new girlfriendShe’s like “oh my God”, but I’m just gonna shake itAnd to the fella over there with the hella good hairWon’t you come on over, baby, we can shake, shake, shakeTo me it seemed to be lyrics that were just written to fill out the song. But apart from that, the song is easy on the ear, fun to dance to and with Taylor’s advice in our minds maybe we can all just ‘shake off’ our problems (at least while the song is playing).The video itself is also simple enough – it shows Taylor taking up different personas: hip-hop twerk-er, Black Swan ballerina, a boom box-wielding poser, and a preppy cheerleader to name a few. See what you think yourself!